Bohdan

Meaning of Bohdan

The name Bohdan is of Ukrainian provenance, etymologically rooted in the Old Slavic elements bog (“god”) and dan (“given”), and is rendered in Anglophone contexts as boh-dahn (/ˈboʊdæn/). Connoting “gift of God,” it embodies a theologically anchored appellation whose semantic resonance has been affirmed through its association with historical personages—most notably Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, whose mid-seventeenth-century leadership indelibly shaped Eastern European sociopolitical configurations. In the United States, the name has maintained a measured but enduring presence, with twenty-two recorded births in 2024 placing it at rank 902 among male names, thereby illustrating its capacity to traverse cultural boundaries while preserving a link to Slavic heritage. Such sustained albeit selective adoption reflects both parental inclination toward names with rich etymological lineage and a desire for distinctive nomenclature within contemporary Anglo-American milieus.